Didactic – Lecture includes a review of ethics and professionalism, statistics, quality assurance in the clinical laboratory and statistical approaches to data evaluation. Safety in the hospital/laboratory is also included.

Didactic – Lecture includes fixation of tissues, anatomy, types of fixation, action of major single and combination fixatives, special fixatives, factors affecting the quality of fixation, fixation for selected individual tissues, incompatible stains and fixatives, useful formulas for fixatives, and dehydrant cross-linking fixatives.

Didactic – Lecture instruction on writing behavioral objectives; teach methods; forms of evaluation and motivation of student; research design; and basic principles of evaluating a research paper.

HTL 507 Fixation PracticumSuggested Credit = 1 CRRotation = hands-on rotation for four weeks in each of six hospital histologylabs. Students will receive laboratory instruction in all current histologic fixationtechniques with clinical correlation, QC and computer operation.

HTL 508 Processing/Embedding PracticumSuggested Credit = 3 CRRotation = hands-on rotation for four weeks in each of six hospital histologylabs. Students will receive laboratory instruction on specimen dissection,different tissues, microarray, automated tissue processing, troubleshooting and maintenance to include all techniques utilized in processing and embedding.

HTL 509 Microtomy PracticumSuggested Credit = 6 CRThere will be rotation for four weeks in each of six hospital histology labs. Laboratory instruction on principles of microtomy applicable to both paraffin and frozen sections and techniques necessary to provide quality microscope slides for clinical and research histology.

HTL 510 Staining PracticumSuggested Credit = 5 CRThere will be rotation for four weeks in each of six hospital histology labs.Laboratory instruction on staining, properties of dyes, troubleshooting staining,H & E plus special stains, clinical correlation, techniques in immunofluorescence, immunochemistry, QC, electron microscopy, and quantitative data from microscopic specimens. Solving problems with staining will be addressed with both identification and potential resolution.

Student Lab Description

The Student Lab at the Sentara RMH School of Histotechnology will be an on-site student lab, where daily, the students will practice histology skills. The student lab will correlate with and reinforce didactic lectures. Microtomy will be primary to all labs. Once proficiency in microtomy is demonstrated, students will use their ability to produce their own slides for H&E, special stains, troubleshooting and problem-solving. They will understand on a practical level the theory of fixation, embedding procedures and the importance of proper processing. Not only will they learn and reproduce proper techniques and procedures, but they will be exposed to predetermined errors and failures to follow procedure, or unpredicted events, and thus learn to troubleshoot and problem-solve. Areas of hands-on instruction and practicum include, but are not limited to, paraffin microtomy, frozen sections, embedding, processing, H&E staining, special stains, immunohistochemistry, maintenance, use and care of all equipment related to the above, and the quality control procedures for each. Case studies will be utilized to demonstrate the clinical correlation between histology results and diagnosis/pathology/disease.